


Static

by howardently



Category: My Mad Fat Diary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-17
Updated: 2015-06-17
Packaged: 2018-04-04 19:17:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4149693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howardently/pseuds/howardently
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gary and Finn have a bit of a chat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Static

He’s got an armful of work papers the first time he walks by the den and spots Finn lying on the floor beside the ancient tapedeck that he’s had since his own college days. He doesn’t think much of it at first, but by the time he’s made himself a brew and settled in at the kitchen island, it occurs to him that there’s an opportunity in Finn’s stillness. So he abandons his files and his mug and heaves himself down the corridor to the den.

Finn doesn’t say anything as he walks in and folds himself down onto the floor, but that’s unsurprising. Finn’s never been much of a talker, and since puberty filled him in and he got that bloody haircut, he’s been even more taciturn. He’s frequently out of the house doing God only knows what, and when he is home, he’s locked up in his room with the stereo blaring. Gary understands, really. He’s young enough to remember when music and girls and getting pissed with your mates were the only things that mattered.

Still, he misses his son.

Gary lies back besides Finn, rests his head on his folded arms. After less than a minute, Finn shifts so that his arm presses into Gary’s side, and Gary bites back a smile.

“What’re we listening to?” He asks, and Finn makes a kind of shrug. It’s not bad, this. Older, familiar. None of that whiney, mopey stuff that’s been pouring out from under Finn’s door the last week or so.

“I was looking for a tape, and I found this.” Finn grunts, and he has to suppress the urge to turn on his side and pet Finn’s fringe off his face like he used to. It’s hard sometimes, coming to grips with the fact that his kid is grown, that he can’t just touch him however he wants like he’s always done. “I was just checking it out. Couple of okay tunes.”

Gary makes a noncommittal noise, and they fall back into silence, both staring up at the ceiling as they let the music wash over them. He’s glad they have this, that the music stuff is a commonality between them. Finn looks so much like his Mum, it’s always nice to see the places where he’s part Gary too.

The track switches over with a soft static buzz, and when the first bars start, Gary can’t help but laugh. Maybe it’s the song, or maybe it’s thinking about her just now, but he’s suddenly transported back to that dusty putt-putt course on that sticky August night all those years ago. Her in her towering platforms, looking wild and free and sexy. He’d chased her around the mini castle, and her laughter had trailed behind them, opened up a part of him that he hadn’t known existed. And when he’d caught her, wrapped his arms around her waist, her laughter was nothing but soft gusts against his lips until he’d kissed her.

“What?” Finn asks, and Gary can sense that he’s turned to look at him. He directs his fond, reminiscent smile at the ceiling, not wanting to lose the moment by looking back.

“This is a tape I made for your Mum.” He laughs again, thinking of her smooth brown legs against the warm grill of his car. “She hated this song.”

Finn chuckles, and Gary hears what he thinks is a hint of surprise in his son’s laugh. They listen to the song silently for a while and Gary can’t help but sigh a little, though he knows Finn is still watching. Probably judging, too. The song is embarrassingly sentimental, which is why Jacqueline had hated it so much, but he’d been young and in love and it always, always reminded him of those first few months together.

“What…” Finn starts, and Gary turns to look at him. Finn’s eyes are squinty and he turns back towards the ceiling as soon as Gary moves. He looks young still, like the boy he was so recently, but also too big, too grown. A man child, still his little boy somehow transformed into this overgrown body. “When did you make this for her?”

There’s a weird tone to Finn’s voice; he can’t quite make sense of it. But he’s shifted just a fraction closer, and his boot is bumping up against Gary’s bare foot, and Gary thinks that these kinds of moments are slipping away faster than he can keep up with. These moments of just hanging out with Finn are growing rarer and rarer, and he knows that soon Finn might leave altogether and there’ll be another bittersweet association for all these songs. He pushes back the depressing thought, scrambles to recover the vision of Jacqueline in those early days to share with his son.

“Mmm…” He murmurs, reaching up to rub at his lips. It feels like a lifetime ago, but somehow he can almost smell her perfume still. “It was the summer we first started going together, I think. I was crazy about her right away, pretty much in love that first week. But she took a bit more persuading.”

He laughs, thinking of the way she’d swung her legs over the side of the picnic table and shot him a dismissive glance over the top of her sunglasses. She’d been disdainful of him at the start, too cool and too beautiful for a muppet like him. 

“What do you mean, persuading?” Finn asks, and he sounds both wary and like he’s dying to know. Gary grins, thinking of the way he’d negotiated himself into her tiny little shorts, knowing he can’t share that with his son.

“Well, I dunno. I guess I chased her a bit. She worked in this little shop, and I kept popping in every day for a drink. I think I asked her out about a dozen times before she said yes.”

“Really?” Finn asks, slow and wondering. “That doesn’t seem like Mum. I mean, what I remember of her. Which isn’t much.”

He sounds sad, and Gary has a hot moment of hating Jacqueline once again. What she’d done to his boy, it was unforgivable. If it had been just him… But it wasn’t. It was Finn, and he’ll never let it go.

“We never talk about her.” Finn continues, and Gary’s stomach clenches. “What was she like, you know, when you guys were young, or whatever?”

Gary glances over, he can’t help it. Finn sounds cautious, like he can’t trust this conversation. His forehead is furrowed, and his fingers absently pull at a hank of the carpet. Gary wants to grab his hand, hold on to him in this moment when his son feels so uncertain because of her. But a wave of guilt washes through him; perhaps he’s done just as much to prevent Finn from knowing her as she has.

They don’t talk about her. Finn talks to her a few times a year, on birthdays and holidays and whatnot. He used to visit over the summer, when school was out, but Gary’d quit forcing him to go around the time that Jacqueline got married again. It’d been a relief, actually. Those long months without Finn, the empty house echoing around his solitary footsteps, had been hard to bear. No muddy footie shoes, no half-drank cups of tea. Finn leaving for the summer had been worse than Jacqueline leaving for good.

But maybe he should talk about her to Finn. The her she was when they fell in love, rather than the woman who’d unseated their lives when he was so young. Finn’s a man now, and maybe all that mopey music is an indicator that he’s dealing with some falling in love troubles of his own. The story might actually be pertinent for his boy now.

“Oh no, your Mum was one cool customer when we were young.” He offers after a moment, and studies Finn’s upturned face. He can’t be sure, but he thinks something in his son relaxes. “She was bloody gorgeous, of course, too gorgeous for the likes of me. And she knew it.”

He can’t help but laugh, remembering her painted lips always on the verge of a sneer. “So when I finally wore her down, I knew I had to do something big to get her to like me. Did I ever tell you about our first date?”

Finn’s lips curl up a little, and his fingers still, hand coming to rest over his stomach. He shakes his head.

“Well, I thought I’d better pull all the stops out, you know? She’d finally agreed to go out with me. I bought her a corsage, like a right twat. Your Nan suggested it, said nice boys brought girls corsages in her day, and what did I know, right? I wore my best suit, my only suit, which was this horrible speckled brown thing. She took one look at me and laughed, made me take the jacket off before we even got to dinner.” It’s not hard to keep the bitterness at bay when he talks about her like this; it’s almost as if the girl she was when they met was a totally separate person than the woman she ended up as. And he’d so loved the girl. “So, I made reservations at this fancy restaurant, the kind you go to on anniversaries and graduations. She hated it. It was stuffy and formal… She just hated it.”

“What happened?” Finn is definitely smiling now, and it’s worth remembering just for that grin.

“I took her for ice cream after, and she turned her cheek when I went to kiss her at the end of the night. I asked her out again and she said no.” Gary shakes his head, chuckles as he recalls the embarrassment and disappointment that had flooded him. He’d been entranced by her, and he’d been equal measures crushed and determined after that date. “But I wasn’t going to give up, no sir. I was half in love with her already, with her great laugh and her impossibly long legs.”

Finn turns to look at him now, and doesn’t glance away when Gary meets his eyes. Gary waggles his eyebrows and grins at his son. “So, I pulled out my secret weapon. Take note, son. This is how you get a girl to love you.”

“How?” Finn’s eager, and a weight settles on Gary’s chest. He must’ve been right about Finn and a girl.

“I made her a mixtape.”

“Not this one, I hope!” Finn bursts out laughing, and Gary fakes indignation.

“Oi!” He exclaims, reaching over to give him a shove. Finn rolls with it, landing back up against Gary’s side. “There’s nothing wrong with this one! This is a great tune!”

They listen together for a moment as Rod Stewart croons through the speakers, and Finn laughs again, happy. God, it’s nice to see his son laugh at him that way.

“Alright! Just goes to show ya, that’s what love does: it ruins your taste in music!” Gary concedes, tossing a hand in the air listlessly. “This wasn’t the one, the first one. I made this one after we’d been together for a bit. That first one, I wanted to impress her. It was better than this.”

“I shudder to think of what you used to impress her with.” Finn groans around a smile.

Gary grins toothily at the ceiling. “I used what men have used for ages, Finn. I used reggae.”

Finn groans, then coughs out a huge laugh. “It’s a wonder that I’m lying here, isn’t it?”

“Hey, don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it, lad.” Gary knocks Finn’s shoulder with his own. “It works. One of these days, you’ll see. You’ll need to impress a girl, and then you’ll remember this advice from your dear old Dad.”

A comfortable silence falls, their laughter petering out slowly, and Gary turns to watch the emotions play over his son’s face again. Something settles over Finn’s eyes, and Gary finds himself shaking his head ruefully.

“What’s her name?” He asks, and it’s a risk, he knows. Chances are pretty good that Finn will clam up at this question, possibly even get up and leave. But if there’s ever a time Finn might talk to him about a girl, it’s now.

“What?” He replies, and Gary can tell from the choked sound that he’s dead on. And the wretched look on his son’s face tells him that Finn’s in pretty deep already as well. He suppresses a sigh, holds himself back from reaching to pull Finn into a hug. He settles for placing a hand on Finn’s wrist where his arm lies between them.

“Rae.” Finn sighs after a minute, and Gary squeezes his wrist slightly. “Her name is Rae.”

He debates for a moment about whether to push, whether to ask any of the dozen questions that have occurred to him suddenly. While he’s deliberating, Finn offers more without prodding, and Gary has to choke back a sound of surprise.

“She’s… different. Special.” Finn says, then chuckles softly, dreamily. “She doesn’t take any of my shit, that’s for sure. She’s funny and, and dead cool. She really knows her music.”

Gary wants to sigh, wants to murmur Oh Finn and pull his son into his arms. It’s only a few sentences, only a couple dozen words, but Gary can hear the longing in Finn’s voice, that same longing that he’d had all those years ago. He wants to groan, to lament that his son is grown enough to love someone the way he’d loved her. He wants to protect his baby boy from the terrible price of loving a girl, from the vulnerability of falling in love so young. He hopes that Finn won’t be like him in that regard, won’t give his heart away for good at seventeen. He wants to shake him, tell him it’s not worth it.

But instead, he just says, “Maybe you should invite her around for some reggae. I’ve got a few Peter Tosh albums around here somewhere.”

“God, Dad.” Finn grunts, rising up to a sitting position. He presses stop on the stereo and stands, rubs his hands along the front of his jeans before offering Gary a hand up. Gary accepts, and the two men stand facing each other in the den for a moment. Gary puts a hand on his son’s shoulder, and Finn smiles briefly before rolling his eyes and shrugging him off.

Finn leaves the room, and Gary sighs after him before going to the kitchen to make tea. He’s half buried in the refrigerator when Finn’s arms slide around his waist, startling him. Finn curves himself over Gary’s bent back, squeezes firmly for a moment. Gary pats his arm, gives the milk a weepy grin. Finn’s gone before he can turn around, and it takes less than two minutes before the mopey music starts upstairs, vibrating the kitchen walls.

—

Three days later, he comes home to the pulsing sound of Bob Marley from upstairs. He grins to himself and shakes his head.


End file.
